TITLE: Raisin Pie
SPOILER STATEMENT: You've GOT to be kidding. None. Well, except for some of
the stuff in Mulder's sink...
RATING: PG
CONTENT STATEMENT: A few bad words.
CLASSIFICATION: VH
SUMMARY: Response to shannono's "Lasagna". Mulder's loose in the kitchen --
everybody duck! And any resemblance between this story and the author's first
attempt to bake a pie, back during the Carter Administration, is strictly
coincidental.... ;)
Raisin Pie
by Brandon D. Ray
What the hell was he doing?
Mulder didn't cook. And he *certainly* didn't bake. This was going to be a
disaster.
He so thoroughly didn't cook that he didn't even own a cookbook -- not even the
Betty Crocker his mother had given him as a housewarming gift when he got his
first apartment. That one got sent to Good Will years ago, to make room for the
Alien Autopsy Encyclopedia.
Nevertheless, here he was, in the kitchen, preparing to bake one of his
childhood favorites: raisin pie. After a quick trip to the grocery store, of
course, since the only ingredient he'd had on hand was tap water. And also
after a quick hop onto the Internet to find the recipe.
He really didn't know where this domestic urge came from. He'd woke up that
morning feeling perfectly normal, other than a small, niggling sense that he was
supposed to be doing something. Something important. Something vital.
The problem was that he hadn't had the faintest clue what that something might
be. It was Saturday, so he didn't have to go to work, and he and Scully didn't
have a case hanging over their heads at the moment. He'd paid the bills for
this month *last* week, and he was even caught up on all his expense
reimbursement paperwork.
Well, okay -- *Scully* was caught up on all his reimbursement paperwork. Same
difference.
He'd tried pacing through his apartment; he'd tried dribbling his basketball;
he'd tried surfing the net. But nothing had served as a sufficient distraction;
nothing had made that sense of incompleteness go away. Finally, he'd found
himself standing in the kitchen staring at the oven -- and suddenly he knew.
So here he was, two hours, one Yahoo search and one shopping trip later,
standing in the kitchen, ready to bake.
Jesus.
And why raisin pie? At least *that* question was easy to answer: It was the
only type of pie his mother had ever made. Other families had mince pie,
pumpkin pie, apple pie, even rhubarb pie. But for the Mulders it had always
been raisin pie.
And it had been damned good. He hadn't had one in years.
All right. The sooner he got started, the sooner he'd be finished -- and
hopefully the sooner he'd be rid of the damned compulsion that'd been following
him around all day long.
First things first: Two cups of seeded raisins dumped in a small saucepan with
an equal quantity of water, and the heat turned on high to bring it to a rapid
boil. Check.
While he was waiting for the water to boil he scanned on down the instructions
-- and oh, shit. He was supposed to be preheating the oven. He quickly reached
out and twisted the knob to 400 degrees. Better late than never. Hopefully.
And now the water was boiling. Unfortunately, he hadn't been paying close
attention, so he didn't really know how *long* the water had been boiling. It
couldn't have been more than a minute or two, though. Probably. It was
supposed to boil for five minutes, so he'd just give it another three or four
and call that good enough.
The next step was to add half a cup each of sugar and chopped walnuts, then stir
in a tablespoon of flour, two tablespoons of grated lemon rind and three
tablespoons of cider vinegar. No grater in the house, so forget the lemon rind
-- and why the *fuck* did this stupid recipe even *think* he might own a set of
measuring spoons?
Well, nothing to do about it now. He rummaged around in the sink, trying not to
wonder too hard about what some of the things were that his hand encountered,
and finally pulled out a reasonably clean soup spoon. He looked it over,
squirted some dish soap on it and rinsed it off, just to be safe -- safer -- and
then rapidly scooped the rest of the ingredients into the water and raisin mix
and proceeded to stir briskly for one minute.
Okay, time to bring it home. Even in his current state of domestic frenzy
Mulder hadn't been so delusional as to believe he might be able to make a pie
crust from scratch, and so he'd bought one at the store, ready made. Now he
poured the bubbling raisin mixture into the bottom crust, laid the top crust
down on top of it, and slid the entire assemblage into the oven -- the oven
which he devoutly hoped was now at 400 degrees.
And then he had forty minutes to kill.
Three games of Maelstrom later, Yahoo dropped an email to let him know the pie
was supposed to be done, and so he put the game on pause and went back into the
kitchen. It smelled good in there; maybe he'd actually gotten it right. He
popped open the oven door -- and suddenly realized he needed a hot pad.
Four minutes of frantic searching later, he found one in the bathroom, sitting
beneath a pot which was half full of congealed macaroni and cheese. He must
have been in a hurry one day last week....
He ran back into the kitchen with the hot pad, bringing the pot of mac and
cheese with him since he was going in that direction anyway. He dumped the pot
into the sink, then stooped down and pulled the pie out of the oven and set it
on the counter.
It looked good. It looked really, really good. The crust was golden brown, and
the filling was bubbling up out of the holes he'd poked in the top crust. And
the smell -- the smell was wonderful. Just the way he remembered it. Perfect.
Now there was only one thing missing: Someone to share it with. You just
didn't eat pie alone -- not in Mulder's experience. And there was really only
one person he could call. Scully.
Of course, he *could* call the Gunmen, but he had a feeling his culinary
masterpiece would be wasted on those cretins. Not to mention the weeks of Julia
Child jokes he'd have to put up with. So it pretty much had to be Scully.
He left the pie cooling on the counter and went out in the living room, but just
as he was reaching for the phone, it rang -- and Mulder cursed.
There were a limited number of people who might be calling him late on a
Saturday afternoon: It could be the guys. It could be Skinner. Or it could
even conceivably be Kersh, since they were still tying up a few loose ends on
some of those earth shattering assignments he'd given them while they were on
the manure patrol.
He grabbed the phone, intending to get rid of whoever it was as quickly as
possible so he could call Scully....
"Mulder," he said, making his voice sound as bored as he could manage.
"What are you doing for dinner, Mulder?"
It was Scully.
Mulder smiled.
Fini